There is no way known that the tone of these comments would be so negative if the name at the top of the list was, say, John Guttag rather than Ana Bell.
Top comment "Her recommendations are poor." Really? I call bullshit on that. I say it's a fine list put together by someone who teaches the most prominent course on introductory programming with the reasoning behind each of the choices. My list would be different. So would yours. That's the point. (Top comment calling "poor" couldn't come up with 5 books!) But hey, it's a woman so out come the idiots being wildly critical in ways they would not be other than they seem to be unaware of how confronted they are by a, gasp, woman. Wooo... "No I'm smarter, no really, really I am, let me prooooove it." FFS Bro, deep breath.
People have raised valid points about their disagreements with the recommendations -- whether you agree with their points or not.
You're being overly sensitive and attributing malice prematurely and calling other commentators "idiots". You couldn't even come up with specific reasons why you disagree with other comments besides "everyone's list would be different" and that only brogrammers would criticise a woman.
HN is generally a hypercritical place. I don't know how this is any different from the tone elsewhere where the authors/startup founders have been a man.
I'm not particularly sensitive to it, it has to be fairly pronounced before I'd even notice. This is.
It's one thing to say, I'd do it different. I'd have this book, or that book, or my list would have more this focus or that focus. It's a whole different beast to claim this list is "poor." And it is stupid to do so without countering with a list of exactly 5 books. Yes stupid.
I have read all 5 books. All 5 are excellent books. All 5 are very highly regarded in the field of programming and computer science. The descriptions that are attached to the list in TFA are accurate and useful to anyone reading the list. If there's a book on that list you haven't read, I'd say read it. This list simply isn't in the same postcode as "poor" and the descriptions of it as poor can't back it up in a meaningful way. Maybe there's another reason why the general mood of this thread is hypercritical? Smells a bit though, don't it? Do you really think if Guttag submitted that list the tone here would be the same or would the whole "this book is better" comments be rather more respectful of the original list and author? I've stated my opinion and why. You may of course, disagree.
Here's mine, Petzold "Code", Kernighan and Pike's "Practise of Programming", "The Pragmatic Programmer", Abelson and Sussman "Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs" (with video lectures on youtube), Richard Stevens "Unix Network Programming" or maybe "Advanced Programming in the Unix Environment" - Which betray my OS accent. I'm not sure it's better than Ana Bell's. You can decide for yourself on that point.
Aren't you? Poor may not be a well-thought out word to describe it, but I'm sure there are way more offensive words out there like, I don't know, maybe stupid or idiotic? I interpret poor in this context as having a deficiency in the quality of the list based on the opinion of the critic, just like you having an opinion.
There are so many presumptions in your comment (and your comment below) that I don't know where to start, but I find it very amusing :)
My original comment was based on the reading of the title of this thread and the first few sentences in the referenced article both of which mention the word learn. I would call all five mentioned books a poor choice to learn CS/programming from. The book by Sedgewick is an especially bad one (he has a few in this line of mixing algorithms with a programming language, and I despise all of them, and would never recommend to anyone for learning anything).
Now your comment is typically something I wouldn't respond to, but in a public forum it's different, so I am taking time to write this.
Calm down, control your emotions, and don't divine too much into the motives behind what people write when you don't take time to even read what is written.
Top comment "Her recommendations are poor." Really? I call bullshit on that. I say it's a fine list put together by someone who teaches the most prominent course on introductory programming with the reasoning behind each of the choices. My list would be different. So would yours. That's the point. (Top comment calling "poor" couldn't come up with 5 books!) But hey, it's a woman so out come the idiots being wildly critical in ways they would not be other than they seem to be unaware of how confronted they are by a, gasp, woman. Wooo... "No I'm smarter, no really, really I am, let me prooooove it." FFS Bro, deep breath.